We are the User Experience Team and our main goal is to make OpenOffice.org the best office suite in terms of usability, productivity and enjoyment.
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Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Oh, it's pretty late!

Wow, it's about 2:30 am now... it has been a great day before the conference really starts (great except playing the tourist).

So, after an extensive breakfast, some attendees moved towards a coffee bar to get some "real coffee". And, some bits and bytes from the "free" (as in beer) WLAN internet connection. I think, it has been a very funny discussion and I enjoyed to get in touch with some German community members I didn't knew much about, e.g. Jacqueline Rahemipour, André Schnabel, Stefan Taxhet and Andreas Mantke (see the post yesterday):At 2 pm we had finished to work on our mails. We went back to the hotel and picked up some members of the Sun User Experience team and Max who just arrived. They starved from hunger. So we continued our discussion during a great meal. We decided that the most delicious dish was the "exploded chicken" (own interpretation). Let's have a look at Christian Jansen (Sun UX), Frank Loehmann (Sun UX), Max Odendahl (OOo development) and Andreas Mantke starting the meal (from left to right):After being filled with an enourmous amount and variety of food, we went on to see the "Lama Temple" which is located in the center of the city. Like yesterday, we missed the opening hours by a few minutes ... Ouch! Instead, we took the chance and walked around in the smaller (and maybe less beautiful, but also interesting) streets - like in the picture here:Do you miss something? I think yes, because I didn't talk about the next meal.... A very large group of people joined a meeting in a restaurant nearby. Perfect dinner which brought up a very interesting UX discussion. One of the people involved was Cor Nouws (OOo contributor, e.g. NL marketing contact). From left to right, front to rear ... various people except me:Finally, I don't want you to miss two very interesting UX bits I found today, both located in the Beijing metro. First, there is a very interesting button on the ticket vending machine:The description is rather far away from the button, and the pictures itself help nothing at least. But what could it be on the first sight? It is round, red and protected by a transparent cover to avoid unintended activation. Best guesses: The self destruction mechnism? The ultra-secred rocket launcher? No, it seems to be the help button... but I still don't know if it is for emergency use. Anyway, we should re-think the OpenOffice.org menu item to make it look similar to prevent people from opening the help. This would greatly reduce the efforts for maintaining it :-)

A much better idea was to put braille texts on the handrails for the staircases. This idea rocks and shows how information can be integrated within physical objects: the staircase both leads into a certain direction and will be touched most propably (at least blind people will use it).Now, I will get in touch with my bed. I'm looking forward for my first official conference day...